


The Jetset Life

by InLoveAndSqualor



Category: My Chemical Romance
Genre: Bandom - Freeform, M/M, MCR, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-04-30
Updated: 2009-04-30
Packaged: 2017-11-04 05:20:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/390209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InLoveAndSqualor/pseuds/InLoveAndSqualor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Frank is interviewed about his past relationship with Gerard...</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Jetset Life

_White noise …_

**So… What am I supposed to do?**

Nothing. Just carry on as you were before. I’m just recording this to help with my notes. When I get back I’ll go over it all and that’s what’ll hopefully help me with the book.

**Jesus-fucking-Christ…**

_Frank’s laughter._

**…A book about me and Gerard... If only we’d known at the start. Hell… If we’d known back then the things we know now… There’d be no book for you to write at all.**

_Silence, followed by a pen tapping lightly on a notebook._

So Frank… Let’s start at the beginning. How did it go when you first met?

**Me and Gerard… Well it wasn’t something you could call romance. You couldn’t exactly attribute it to something big or grand or good. It just… Was.**

_Loud sigh._

**D’you mind if I smoke?**

Not at all.

_Rustle._

**So yeah… Me and Gerard… It was the greatest romance that never was. It should have been the usual case of boy meets boy, boy fucks boy, then we all move on with the rest of our lives… But…**

_Lighter sparks._

**…It wasn’t quite that simple. It didn’t work out the way we intended.**

_A deep inhalation followed by the sound of smoke gushing desperately out through pursed lips._

**The Gerard I knew at first… It wasn’t real. He conjured so much of his identity that I didn’t know what was smoke and mirrors…. I think eventually even he didn’t. He was a myth hidden within a lie. But what a beautiful lie he was. He was as beautiful and deadly as a siren… And he was a siren; it wasn’t just the fans. He led us all with his voice and through those songs. We didn’t stand a chance. Fuck I would have followed that guy to the ends of the earth. The moment I met him I knew I was caught… That day the sun was hanging so elegantly low in the sky and he… He was just out for revenge…**

_A long silence followed by the sound of things being shuffled nervously on a table._

**He was dressed up in the colours of Death… But I thought he had more of the angel about him… How wrong could I have been? ******

_Frank’s subdued almost melancholic laughter._

**I met him through his brother Mikey. He’s a good guy. The Way brothers… They had this crazy idea of starting a band and causing a scene. I think it was Gerard that lit that particular fire, and of course like so many others, Mikey was along for the ride. I was committed to this other project but… Gerard… He wanted me. He had this way of persuading a person… So that you feel forced, but you don’t even mind at all… ******

_Silence._

So you said before that you thought Gerard was out for revenge?

**Yeah... Against who or what, I couldn’t tell you. I don’t think he even knew. God, society, his parents… I don’t think it was that simple. I think he wanted revenge against the whole fucking world. I think the world was one big fucking let down to him. It had promised so much and he’d grown bored of it so fast. With him there was always this distaste on him… Like existence had betrayed him, because it just couldn’t match up.**

So you agreed to play guitar for the band?

**Yeah… I mean it wasn’t all him. I liked the direction the guys had as a whole and I respected Mikey… But ultimately the minute he wanted me in I was in.**

_Silence._

**So like for weeks I was just pitching up and doing my bit. And not a lot else. I got to know the guys better; although Gerard remained a bit of a mystery. I just kind of figured that was his thing. We were getting gigs pretty much from the word go and with each show it was always a sure thing that Gerard had somehow landed us that one. But as I said, at that point, it was nothing more than a job really. Back then the only thing I knew about Gerard was his name and… Fuck… That might’ve turned out to be a lie too... I mean the first time we really spoke… It was weeks after the first time we kissed.**

_Sounds of flint sparking._

**I’ve had this tendency recently… Chain smoking. It’s a bad habit…**

_Lighter clatters down on the surface of a table._

**So I guess you’ll want to know about that? …The first time we kissed?**

_Silence._

**…I’d been in the band about three months. Not long really. But even then it felt like I knew nothing else. We’d had this awful gig. I mean awful. We were supporting some local act. Grunge was huge back then; and on the scene these guys were like gods. But us… We didn’t fit the bill. We weren’t there on any level… Music, looks, even sincerity. It’s a long stupid drawn out story that starts with us being first out to a bunch of generally pissed off, and I think a little bit confused, kids and it ends with… Well… Me, on stage, bleeding from the head still playing my stupid fucking heart out… All in the aid of what? I don’t know. I think really I did it for him…**

So… You were attacked on stage? 

**Well I don’t know if you wanna put it like that…**

_Frank's laughter._

**But let’s just say that someone’s beer bottle ended up meeting with my face… Look, I’ve still got the scar to prove it. Here, by my eyebrow.**

I’m guessing that must’ve hurt?

**That’s the funny thing you know. Not as much as you’d think. I guess I was too lost in the moment to really feel it. Well Gerard’s moment. He had this way when he was there singing on stage… We were all lost. Lost in the performance… Lost in the lie I guess you could say.**

**I remember he turned to look at me as I was staggering back, stupid little thoughts coming to me like: Fuck. That’s it Frank. You’re fucking blind now.**

_Frank’s laughter._

**Wave goodbye to your career... It’s all been ended by some kid in the fourth row who’s launched his drink at you cos he thinks you look like a fag.**

_Frank’s laughter again. ___

**But as it turned out… Well it just looked pretty bad I guess…**

_Silence. ___

**Sorry… So where was I? Yeah… Gerard… He just looks at me, mic in hand, lips parted in the hope of a next verse… And I see that he wants me… No… He expects me to play on. And so blinking through beer suds and blood…. I played. And I think that was my biggest mistake of all. I showed him, I gave him the slightest clue, that for him I’d pretty much do anything.**

Did you ever talk to him about that incident?

**No… I mean I didn’t have to. It had all been said… With eyes and in actions. I’d done the stupidest god damn thing and given myself completely away. Knowledge in the hands of certain people is a dangerous thing… Gerard on the other hand was fucking ferocious.**

He saw it as a sign of weakness?

**My weakness. His strength. Something like that. I don’t know… But it gave him a signal, the idea had been planted… And that’s all it took. So after we’d finished I just wanted to be on my own. I was kinda pissed; mainly at myself for looking so stupid. Weird huh? But to me it was like showing the shame of… My devotion. I’d left everyone doing the rock ‘n’ roll cliché in our dressing room. If you could call that dingy little cupboard a dressing room…. Thing is in those days, that’s what passed for luxury. So anyways as I said the guys are getting wasted and attempting to do the whole trashing the fucking place just cos we can… You know rock star credentials bullshit… Except the rooms a fucking shoebox and to be honest I don’t think anyone’d notice the god damn difference anyway. So while they attempt valiantly to make that shit-hole even shittier, I take my guitar in one hand and a bottle of Jack in the other, and walk off to face regret on my own. Backstage I find there’s not a whole lot to see. Just little rooms full of grime and sin… And after walking in on god knows how many people, doing god knows what, I find what I guess is some kind of locker room for the bar staff… Or something… There’s a beaten up old sofa, a coffee table complete with overflowing ashtray, harsh metal lockers looming behind and not a lot else. But I figure it’s good enough to hide in. Because really that’s what I was doing there… Hiding.**

_Frank’s awkward cough._

**Times when I don’t know what to do I tend to resort to one of a few things. Mainly drinking, smoking and playing my guitar. On that particular occasion I needed to lose myself so badly I just did all three.**

_Frank’s uneasy laughter._

**So in that dim room I played my own little personal concert to the shadows. Jesus, I played ‘til I thought my fingers might bleed. I played until that image that plagued my mind, of Gerard standing on stage, was just a blur of a memory… Like a faint scar on my mind.**

You do that a lot…? Immerse yourself in the music to… Well you tell me… To forget?

**Yeah, sure. It’s like when it’s just me and the sound of… Chords echoing through the air, or the faint sound of strings hitting frets… Fingers moving on wood and metal… When music’s being born out of a part of my mind that I can’t normally even begin to reach… Well it’s like sedation. And I always get so completely lost in that particular prescription.**

_Frank’s heavy sigh._

**I’m sorry… I’m going a bit off track here… I guess I tend to do that….**

_An embarrassed laugh._

**Just stop me next time okay?…. Promise?**

_Another laugh._

**So really… We’re getting to the interesting part now… I guess.**

_The sound of a cigarette box being tapped gently against the edge of a table._

**At first I didn’t even notice him there in the shadows… He just suddenly was… He scared the shit out of me actually. Just clapping in the darkness and laughing, quietly, like a fucking maniac. I guess it amused him to see me like that. Thing is, when I realized he was there, my fingers just froze up… I couldn’t play. Fuck, I could barely breathe. Because… He knew it all… I could see it in his eyes that he knew every single sordid desire I had ever dared to have. He just came straight over, not a scent of hesitation, confidence in every single step. I know what I must have looked like… Face drained pale… Paralysed… Just by the look in his eyes... And you know what he did? I mean no one else could ever… He prized that guitar from my shaking hands… And he threw it to the fucking floor. No lie… And I… I didn’t do a thing about it. I just gawped like a moron. I mean my guitar was everything to me. And… I just let him. Jesus…**

_The sound of flint sparking followed by a long uneasy silence._

**He threw my guitar to the floor… And then he took my lips in his own and he claimed a prize that was truly his… His very own trophy… He claimed this all too very eager prize… My every inch that was so very at his mercy… So very devoted to him…**

_A quiet cough._

**This is hard you know? Harder than I thought. It feels like I’m talking about someone else completely… Not me. The memories are there sure… But it’s like a film I watched once or some story I read…**

Why do you think you let him do that?

**I honestly don’t know… It’s like this… Gerard he has this way… If you’ve never met him you wouldn’t understand; you just couldn’t. But… And this is gonna sound corny… But… But he seems to command the very sun to rise in the morning and fall at night. You understand? When he decides he wants something it is his. The closest thing to something someone else could understand is to call it hypnotism really… I was hypnotized by him… I didn’t have a tiny piece of a choice in it at all. I was caught... I was hopelessly caught by him.**

So you… Became intimate after that point?

**Intimate…? I like that. There was no intimacy involved. Everything we did was hot and hurried and… Brutal. Gerard’s touch was brutal. He gave these… Kerosene kisses through a switchblade smile…. But don’t get me wrong… His touch… It was the most wonderful feeling I can imagine… Being under those hands. And back then it was all that I wanted. Maybe because I didn’t know any better; maybe because I knew I couldn’t have anything more. It was like… He only just allowed me to have what we did…**

He was controlling? 

**It was like this… There’d be times when sitting in a room full of people… He’d just look over at me and… And it was like he had parted his lips and spoke. Except no one heard a sound. No one but me. And his eyes they’d tell me exactly what to say and how to say it. Or they’d tell me what to do and precisely when… It was like a sugary sweet, all consuming... Dictatorship…**

_Frank clears his throat._

**Every time we were together… It was like… Every time he would take my heart in his hands and… And fucking crush it. It wasn’t a relationship. It wasn’t an affair. It was just one person using another so completely that it felt like… I don’t know… It felt like he needed or wanted me or something. I should have known better. Gerard… He doesn’t need anyone. I was fucking stupid.**

_Fingers drumming on a table’s surface in an involuntary show of nervous unrest._

**That night in that squalid little room we did something that was all to me about passion and absolutely nothing to him about love. He was claiming the prize I had so stupidly told him on stage was his… And so it went on… It went on for a long time…**

Did anyone know about the relationship…? I’m sorry… I mean did any of the others suspect what was going on?

**I think they knew something. I mean… They had to. Because everything changed after that night. He kept me in his company in such a… Possessive way that everything else in my life got pushed to the side. He demanded my every minute and I gave it to him.**

_Frank's heavy sigh._

**The way it was… Well look… When I was a kid I’d spend long hot summer days at my grandparents’. I mean my mom would abandon me there for hours on end and… Well they didn’t know what to do with a bored kid… They’d just let me wander the house; exploring the unknown depths of a suburban wilderness… So one day on my adventures I stumbled across something that, I don’t know, maybe I was too god damn short to see before. What I saw… Tacked lovingly to the walls, mahogany framed, were these displays of death. It was so macabre… These cases filled with beautiful dead butterflies. Each corpse suspended besides little cards with their Latin names on; a huge pin stuck savagely through each body. The day I found them I just stared appalled. I was so shocked that someone would do that; that someone would take something beautiful and… And kill it. Kill it so that they could gaze upon it at their leisure in the unnatural civility of the inside world. Why preserve something’s beauty by destroying it...? Taking its life? All those lives… As a kid… I guess it kinda shook me… The strange possessive violence that we show towards the tiny frail things that we find enchanting or beautiful… Or whatever. And on the surrounding shelves and desks there were these nets and textbooks and killing jars. Little jars there to slowly suffocate… I guess what I’m saying is that… In the end… I felt like ones of those butterflies, trapped in a killing jar, waiting for my last breath… Gerard staring in… Hoping soon to keep me on his wall; a trophy for ever more.**

So… You ended it?

**Huh? Me…? No… I couldn’t have even if I wanted to… But then that’s the thing: I didn’t want to… I knew it wasn’t perfect… I knew it wasn’t how I wanted it… But I couldn’t do without it. Because in some small way it felt like he needed me… I felt like he wanted me… And well it became like validation.**

So what did happen?

**You know… I don’t know. One day… It just stopped. One day he just decided to stop it all. No more sneaking into my hotel room at night, no more turning up in my doorway hopelessly, irresistibly, drunk at 3am. When I finally realised it was over… I felt lost… Abandoned. He was just gone from my life. It was like he’d fucking died… But there was still this… This ghost of him... He haunted my every moment. It was like my only meaning had been robbed from me; my very reason to be. It was funny because the thing between us, it had always been unspoken. Gerard had this way of telling me how it was with the touch of loveless brutality in his hands. So I guess when Gerard decided it was over… It never occurred to him to actually say it.**

You never spoke about it?

**No… Never. I never felt I could. It was hard… I would stand on stage and just watch… Watch his delicate hands wrapped around his microphone….**

_A small laugh. ___

**…And God… Did I want to feel them on me. I missed so desperately his lips that sang out each chorus so gracefully… Lips that had once sung out my name. Every show, every practice, every stupid publicity event… Was torture. It was like they’d taken away my oxygen and I was there behind the glass watching everyone else breathe.**

So… What happened? How did you carry on for all that time working alongside him?

**Nothing happened. I just… Over the years… I guess I learned how to live without breathing….**

_Frank’s muted laugh._

**I don’t know… I think that’s a little over dramatic… Maybe…**

I guess I’m harming my own cause by asking this… But… Why now? You and Gerard… It’s been a secret for all these years… Why tell all now?

**That’s a good question…**

_Mutual laughter._

**I guess… Well really I was testing Gerard… And he… He called my bluff…**

_A quite cough._

**I really shouldn’t have done that… You see when it was all going on, and even after… It was like those events… Those now faded memories of the past... They were ours only. That’s what made them precious… Precious and rare. To me they were our most sacred buried treasures. It was the one thing we shared solely… Our knowledge of the past… Of those beautiful sinful acts. When I was asked to do this, give the interview, I rang Gerard… I wanted to test him I think… I wanted to know if he felt the way I did... I guess he didn’t…**

What did he say?

**He said… And you can draw your own conclusions here… He said: Good. He said: Tell them Frankie… Only make sure you tell them everything. Tell them every single solitary detail…**

_A loud sigh._

**It was our secret… And he was daring me to tell the entire world…. I don’t know… Maybe he thought I couldn’t… But I think really it was a message…**

A message?

**Yeah. He was telling me he didn’t feel the same as me… The way I always had… He was saying that it all.. It all means nothing to him now… I don’t think really it ever did. It was just a fact of the past... Just another of the events, the many tales, that go to make up the vast library of happenings that shaped the life of Gerard Way. He was telling me that these things I’ve told you… They’re worthless to him… They’re cheap tales to be recounted and printed and forgotten. They’re not sacred to him… They’re not precious… They just were….**

And you…? How do you feel now after revealing all?

**Ah…**

_Sad laughter._

**Like a puppet maybe… I mean look… Even now I’m still doing exactly what he wants me to…**

_Sigh._

**You know… I still hear him… I still feel his call. I still feel that lack… That ache… That unbearable sensation of… Of the absence of his presence…**

_Another sigh._

**You know… I think I’m done…**

So… I’ll see you again next week?

**No…. You know... I don’t think so... Sorry…**

_The scrape of a chair on a wooden floor._

**You see… Those things I’ve told you… The things we did…What we had… I don’t feel the way Gerard does. It wasn’t just one event from the past to me… It was everything to me… It was all… So you see… I’ve told you all… I’ve told you everything… There’s nothing left to say… To tell you.**

_More chair scrapes and hurried steps._

**I am sorry… I really am…**

_Steps echo on a wooden floor. A doorknob turns invoking its latch._

I can’t persuade you to…

_The scuff of feet and the light slam of a door._

_A loud exasperated sigh and a pen falling onto a thick notepad._

Shit… Some book this is gonna be…

**Author's Note:**

> Contest Entry  
> Prompt/Theme: Combine the prompts The Jetset Life is Gonna Kill You by My Chemical Romance & the fairytale The Pied Piper of Hamelin


End file.
